The 7 Most Influential Web Design Trends of 2014

Are tumbleweeds rolling across your website? Is there a digital echo when you ask if anyone is there? You can’t deny that your website is a ghost town. Naturally, that defeats the purpose of having a website. What you have to do is revamp it and make it more attractive for new visitors as well as old ones. Start remodeling right away with these seven hot new web design trends for 2014.

1. Video That Grips Readers’ Attention

People love watching videos. It’s easier than reading text on a computer screen, and it’s entertaining. If you want to grab and hold the attention of visitors to your site, you will incorporate video into your website’s design. Fortunately, that’s easier than ever. High connection speeds for both computers and mobile devices make it possible for anyone to watch a high-definition video with ease. Just make sure your web host gives you enough bandwidth to upload and play the videos you want. If it doesn’t, it may be time to upgrade to a better host.

2. Web Design That Responds to Any Environment

With so many people using devices of all different sizes to access the Internet, they need to be sure they can see the whole screen no matter what device they’re using. With responsive web design, your website will automatically adjust to fit the screen of any device your visitor is using to access it.

3. Relevant Content

Content is king as far as today’s search engines are concerned. The sites that are ranking high in the search engines have highly relevant content that is built for the reader, not for the search engines. The days of spammy sites being able to rank high by strategically placing its keywords are long gone. Now relevance in content is what matters.

4. Clean, Simple Backgrounds and Colors

Backgrounds on content-heavy sites should be clean and simple. A background that is too “busy” will distract the reader, just like too many ads can distract in a newspaper or magazine. If you’re running a news site or other site that uses a lot of content, a simple, white background with black borders will highlight the content and provide all the visual appeal your readers need. Use other colors sparingly to highlight a particular piece of content you want your reader to notice.

5. Navigation Bars That Stay in One Place

Yesterday’s web designers tried to be clever by hiding navigation bars under flash ribbons or making you scroll over the page title for them to appear. Once you scrolled down the page, the navigation would disappear. Those days are gone. Today, fixed, visible navigation bars are the thing visitors want to see. Because fixed navigation bars look good with any type of website design, they are both functional and visually appealing.

6. Mobile Responsive Designs

The use of mobile devices to access the Internet has taken off into the stratosphere over the past two or three years. Some people rely on tablets and smartphones entirely when they go online, and sales of tablets are now greater than PC and laptop sales. This means your website must be accessible and adaptable to mobile sites in order to reach the greatest number of visitors and to remain relevant. Your site should also be easy to use in a mobile world and available in perfect form on any device from any carrier, such as T-Mobile.

7. Flat Designs That Keep Visitors on Your Page

Back in the dark ages of web design, websites got fancy with 3-D images, color gradients, and shadows to try to give the site a more “real world” look. As it turns out, people didn’t like that. Textured design was pretty hard on the eyes and didn’t provide any particular place of focus for visitors on a site. Flat design is now ruling website design trends. It is minimalist in nature, so it adapts well to mobile devices. It also allows designers to use a wider variety of bright colors to provide visual focal points.

The world of website design is constantly changing. What is trendy one year may be out of date the next year. In order to keep your website relevant and to continue bringing in visitors, you’ve got to stay on top of the latest trends and use them. Only then will your website perform at its best and become the highly visited site you always knew it could be.